80S

Who and when defined the sci-fi genre? Thats a good question and it fits
perfectly on this part of the essay, the answer to that question, at least my answer,
is I dont know, sure, there is a debate, some say that it was Stanley Kubrick with
2001:space odyssey, some others say that it was Ridley Scott with alien: the eight
passenger, or even George Lucas with the billionaire franchise star wars, but that
is not what matters, yes, before the 80s sci-fi existed, but during that decade, oh
man, during that era, sci-fi movies were made like bread, it is, without a doubt the
golden era of the science fiction, but with some of the best sci-fi that was ever
made, some that wasnt to good also came out. so eventually the market was
oversaturated, the outcome: some really good movies, and others that werent that
good, it doesnt matter now, it is part of the past, but sometimes it is good to look
back and compare, and if you grew up on that time, even get melancholic about it.
Is interesting and sometimes even fun to look at how the people in the past thought
about today, so for this essay, or at least this part of the essay, I watched all the 80
s sci-fi movies that I could until my brain was bleeding through my ears and nose
I started with a cult movie, it is called escape from new york. So, year 1997
(this film was made in 1984, so it is about the future) the crime in the united states
has elevated a 400 percent, and well, the president decides to turn all of New York
into a gigantic jail, more of a criminals city type of thing, sealing it all with a gigantic
wall, then the president gets kidnaped by some criminals in the city and the
government sends a bad-ass convict to get him back in exchange of his freedom,
pure 80s fashion. Lets focus on the things that the movie predicted, the most
important, a New York turned into a criminals city, and well we all know that is not
like that, but does a place like that really exists? Well not really but I found some
really interesting jails that in that time didnt existed even at the dreams of the
people.

Bastoey prison in Norway, is an eco-friendly prison that occupies an entire

island, the prison has a total of 75 people of which 35 are guards, in the nights a
total of four guards stay while the others go to their home in Oslo, there are
activities like tennis, horse riding and swimming, the inmates grow their own food
and they live in cabins in groups of six, the percentage of inmates that relapse
once their free again is about 16% while in other prisons in the united states is
about 70%, dont know but maybe all the prisons must be like this.
The Justizzentrum leoben in Austria is another prison that isnt as conventional
as the ones in the eightys, Justizzentrum is a 5-star jail that has all the services
that a hotel can have, it has procreative activities such as hand crafting and
cooking, the cells are individual and the structure is made of stainless steel and
glass, designed by the architect Joseph Hohensinn this jail is one of the most
luxurious jails in the planet.
But there is one jail with the most resemblance to the one in the movie, its
called San Pedro jail in Bolivia and its unique feature is the intern society that has
been created. The interns have a job and they pay for the place their staying in and
the place their using to sell, there are no guards and theres a bunch of leaders
chosen by the community that assures that the coexistence in the jail is working
fine, and like you would in the real society, if you want to have a better room you
have to pay for it. There are no bars on the cells and youre free to go wherever
you want in the jail.
So there is a jail that resemblance the one in the movie, obviously not exactly
but, there is one. What about other things that the movie predicts, when the movie
starts some guards are escorting our movie hero inside the prison, as he walks we
hear a recording that says that if he want, he can be executed and cremated on
that facility, euthanasia in the eightys was starting to get serious, with
organizations been created to support euthanasia like the world federation of right
to die or the hemlock society, but euthanasia was only being consider for terminal
state patients, not for criminals, the euthanasia for criminals is recently being
consider by the government in various countrys but in that time that didnt cross

their minds, even in this year theres no country or state that allows the prisoner to
choose between a life time on a jail or an instant death. So yes, there is no country
that has allowed euthanasia in criminals, but that is the future, that is where we
are going to, governments are starting to realize that it is not a bad idea, so, I
assure you that in the next 20 years we will be seeing that on our newspaper.
Thats about it with escape from New York, it couldnt include much vision of the
future, because it takes place in a city that is excluded from the society, and pretty
much is stocked in the movies past, but is interesting to see how the people of that
era imagined the future jails, how about war, how do the people in the eightys
imagined war in the future, for this particular theme I watched the terminator once
again, a movie that centers on a war fought against machines liberated by a super
potent AI .This movie, or at least the future part of this movie takes place in 2029,
so lets see how advancement is going, referring to Ai, robotics engineering, time
traveling and laser guns.
well referring to robotics in the military, youll be surprised of how advanced
they are, a simple example are the drones or unmanned ships, that as their names
suggests they are ships that doesnt have to have a pilot on board to fly, but thats
a thing of the past to US army, because theyve released the X-47B that is a drone
that can fly with no pilot on ground and on board. That is a huge advancement on
AI and robotics, but that is not all, in 2020 the US army is planning to release a
new program that allows the plain to shoot missiles and machine guns
autonomously, this means that by program commands the machine judges to
whom will fire and whom will not fire, this released a polemic war in the US
because some say that it is immoral and inhuman. Another sci-fi movie of the 80s
that centers on this problem is the well-known Robocop in the first half hour you
can see in authentic 80s violence the outcomes of a programming error, when in a
demonstration of a new robot, an error cause the gory death of the one helping
with the demonstration. So, this is happening right now, the military of the US is
working hard to accomplish it and it is going to be real in not much time, but can a
moral code be inserted on a computer as if it is a simple computer program?, and if

the answer is yes by some of the experts, what will we be good for, where do the
human thinking will go, if a moral code can be inserted on a machine, whos moral
code will it be?, this seems unreal to me, but the reality is that is going to happen,
and when it happens, it will be awesome.
Well after searching all of that stuff, the judgment day dont seems to far from
this day, but how about time traveling, can it be possible, do it really will exist, well
practically not, but there are some scientific theories that say it is possible, it is
pretty hard to explain, but Ill try my best. One, the most common one, says that if
we get to travel at light speed, (300,000 kilometers per second) or close to light
speed, the time will go slower for you. Lets say that you had 15 years when you
took a spaceship and went for a ride at 95% of light speed, in space you spend 5
years, so now youre 20 years old, now you decide to get back to earth to see how
youre buddies are holding, when you see them youll notice they are 65 years old
while youre just 20, this would happen, because while your buddies have been
traveling 1 hour/ 1 hour, you my friend, you have been traveling a lot faster, so
technically youve traveled in time. Of course this is just theory, mankind is not
even close to travel at that speed but you never know, maybe in a few years it will
be possible, but though this theory is absolutely awesome, Einstein came up with
something even more complicated, he said that the time runs slower when close to
a gravitational camp, considering this, you can say that there are a lot of time
distortions in the universe, so for example, if youre closer to a black hole, time
would run much more slower than it runs here on earth, trippy, dont you think.
Considering that AI and robotics are a lot more advance than at least I thought,
and that time traveling is theoretically possible, terminator doesnt seems too
overdone, dont you think, but how about laser guns, because weve seen a lot of
those on sci-fi movies, including terminator, so are they possible, youll again be
surprised my friend, because they are not just only possible, theyre a reality. A
simple example is the laser cannon called LaWS or Laser Weapon System, just
installed on the US navy ship called the Ponce, this laser is capable of generate
an energy beam of 30 kilowatts more than 6 million times the energy that a legal

laser pointer on the market. Unlike the ones weve seen on sci-fi, this laser gun
wont make any noise and wont fire anything visible for the human eye, instead it
concentrates an incredible amount of energy on one single point, destroying it, or
just disabling it. But theres one that resembles more to the ones in the sci-fi, it is
under development but there it is, it is called HELLADS or High Energy Liquid
Laser Area Defense System and it can generate 150 kilowatts, thats 5 times
more than LaWS, this laser cannon doesnt make any noise but the energy beam
can be seen. The advantage with lasers is that theyre a lot cheaper than missiles,
a missile can cost around 2 million US dollars, while firing a laser gun like this,
costs around 0.60 US dollar. Today, using a laser weapon against a human being is
illegal because an agreement in the convention of Ginebre made in 1995, what a
shame, it would be fun tough.
So for what weve seen, it seems that 80s sci-fi isnt that mistaken, or at least
an interpretation of what happens in the movies can be made on todays world,
after I finished terminator, I watched a sci-fi cult movie considered by many the
best movie on the franchise, Mad Max: The road warrior or mad max 2, the
premise of this movie is simple, the oil is running out in the world, and the countries
fight a war to get what is left of it, this war ends by destroying every type of
institution and government, so chaos breaks into society and with time and a civil
war being fought by everyone on the planet, the world becomes a wasteland. In
this time, we all know that the oil is a very valuable source, but why, well, the oil, is
actually a no renewable source, this means that it cannot be made, the quantity
that the world has is the quantity that we have, sure, it is made of fossils, but a
fossil takes million years to be made, and even other million years to become oil, it
do not regenerates fast enough to satisfy the actual demand, thats why the
gasoline costs 3.50 pesos more every month, yeah thats why, anyway, in the last
few years the shortage of oil, has become greater, so, huge companies and the
governments of a lot of powerful countries, are searching for a new, clean,
renewable fuel, that replaces the oil, so what happens in Mad Max, do not happens
in real life. Maybe, Mad Max is the reason of the governments reaction to the fact
that the oil is not renewable, maybe without this type of films, the society wouldnt

ask the question what would happen if? And we would be the ones who would
figure it out by living it, thats why the sci-fi is so important, thats why is so
important that the people thinks about the future, not for imagine floating cars and
flyng skate boards, but thinking about the real issues that the society may face in
future generations, thats how good sci-fi gets created, great minds thinking about
great problems and asking the question what would happen if? for this part I
watched a movie that Im sure that if you have not seen it yet, you have heard
about it, its name is ALIEN. The eight passenger for a lot of people it is just a
conventional 80s sci-fi terror movie but have think about the political critique that is
involved. The movie starts in the nostromo spaceship while the crew of the ship
gets a transmission coming of an unknown planet, then the ship lands on the
planet and it turns out that is full of alien eggs. When the crew returns into the ship
they realize that an alien is in there with them, and then the movie starts. The
interesting part is that as the movie advances you and the crew realize that the
company they work for, wanted to get a xenomorph individual for testing with it and
clone it for military reasons, though it can put in danger the crew, and the whole
human race if something goes wrong, everything in name of war. With this movie,
the director, Ridley Scott, answered the question what will happen when the
humans make contact with other intelligent species? and voil, one of the greatest
sci-fi movies of the 80s and all time.
In conclusion, the 80s was a time of asking the question what would happen
if?, the outcome: the golden age of science fiction, and the age where many of the
warnings that the people of the past made to future generations. Who knows,
maybe, without this movies the present would be much more different than to the
one we know, and who knows, maybe in thirty years, the present will be much
more like the movies in the eightys because, yes, today society have not reached
the technologic advancement that the 80s cinema portrayed, but in thirty years,
who knows where society may be, who knows, maybe, we will be killing for a
gallon of oil, maybe we will be fighting war with machines or against machines,
maybe entire states will become giant jails, maybe a mistake with alien
experimentation will mean the human race destruction, maybe, maybe, maybe,

thats the word that makes this genre and type of warning so especial, that no one
knows what will happen and what will not, and thats why imagination is so
interesting, maybe youll write a book that will save the humanity in years to come,
maybe you will ask the question that nobody has asked yet, that question that If no
one asks, well, when humanity faces it, no one will know the answer.